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Come on now. Most lumber, paper and forestry products are still domestically sourced. So is food, most automobiles, metals, chemicals, oil refineries and building products. Clothing, appliances, electronics, and other retail products that require unskilled labor, high volume assembly, and high volume, low quality, low precision molded parts, are done overseas.

Of course recovering energy from food products, would require... umm..uhhh... a different style of waste water plant than the current design is most municipalities to generate methane gas.

Energy from metals is recovered by recycling them. Its' energy and water saved in processing the ore. Especially aluminum.

Of course recovering energy from food products, would require... umm..uhhh... a different style of waste water plant than the current design is most municipalities to generate methane gas.

Actually, that is the key reason plasma arc gassification is so useful. It can handle pretty much any organic stock. It can even be done with existing sewage processing, by sending dried solids through the arc. It is not quite as efficient as bio-processing and methane collection, but it IS a lot simpler to retrofit into existing sewage handling streams - and the same gassification plant can handle the organics down the drain AND the organics in the trash can.

No argument there, unfortunately, no-one in the US or Canada manufacture anything, so it doesn't really apply...

Isn't the oil/coal/uranium market global?

What china does surely has an impact on energy availability/cost.

Most residual waste after recycling/composting consists of:

- Plastic food packing, mostly from virgin materials (oil/energy)
- Discarded appliances (metal which took energy to mine/process, plastic from oil) which should have been repaired
- Construction waste which should be recycled into new materials

- Plastic food packing, mostly from virgin materials (oil/energy)
- Discarded appliances (metal which took energy to mine/process, plastic from oil) which should have been repaired
- Construction waste which should be recycled into new materials

Incineration to me is a cop-out.

Dude, lighten up... the manufacturing thing was a joke...

You are correct, that many items are fully recyclable. I am talking about organic waste, which, while yes, can be reduced, and yes, is ultimately biodegradable in the land fill, CAN be processed differently, and used to offset our energy demands, even if the energy it offsets is simple used to supplement the cost of collection and sorting. If it is a near net-zero cost, but reduces landfill usage, isn't that a net positive?

I'm not talking about true incineration here. Plasma gasification is a chemical breakdown process, that produces a syngas cleanly, and not JUST from a particular waste type. Any organic substance can be used, whether it is solid food waste, agricultural waste, and/or sewage sludge, even hazardous wastes - all in the exact same plasma arc. That syngas CAN be used for different things. The pure Hydrogen can be extracted from it via pressure swing adsorbtion, and used by refineries for hydrocracking and desulferizing. The CO can be burned in a high O2 furnace producing heat/energy with zero NOX generation. The vitrified slag can be used as a building material. Even if the energy generated by the process is only used for providing the arc furnace's energy demands, it is still a productive use of the otherwise unused garbage - and can be fed by existing landfill stocks. The current practice of biodegrading these substances in the landfill is non-productive, as that landfill is never going to turn into farmland. The agricultural process streams are such that even if every bit of food waste was fully composted, when added to existing animal waste product, it is more compost/fertilizer than can be used by the farms that made the food to begin with.

Many municipalities in Canada have curbside compost pickup now; not sure about the us.

Totally agree....most things you can burn for energy can be put to many many more uses, especially compostables. Better to compost it, grab the methane and spread the rest on the fields than the liquid almost untreated sewage that is put on the fields now.

Totally agree....most things you can burn for energy can be put to many many more uses, especially compostables. Better to compost it, grab the methane and spread the rest on the fields than the liquid almost untreated sewage that is put on the fields now.

But it beats doing neither - which is what will happen if you depend on Americans to sort compostables from their trash.

Many municipalities in Canada have curbside compost pickup now; not sure about the us.

It would be a great idea but there is no way the US would do that, it would cost the city too much money. They had to lay off 150 teachers because they were broke. Whole country is going to and this election isnt going to help anything either.